The Claudia Hershey Mysteries - Box Set: Three Claudia Hershey Mysteries

by Laura Belgrave

  “Ouch, damn it!” She jerked back and banged her head on the door frame. “Shit!” She rubbed her wrist and cautiously peered into the gloom of the interior. Yellow eyes glared back.

  Lovely. One of Wanda Farr’s cats, no doubt sprinkling fleas like fairy dust, had obviously managed to escape the sweep by animal control hours earlier. Now, here it was. Not Wanda Farr’s problem. Not animal control’s problem. Her problem. Brian in the house. A feral cat in the car. Perfect.

  For a moment, Claudia merely stared at the yellow eyes and they stared at her. The cat had moved to the other end of the back seat, as far from her as it could get. For all the movement it made, it might as well have been a stone, though she knew it could deploy itself fast enough to take out her eyes if she grabbed at it. But the stare-off had to end, so in a voice she hoped sounded soothing she murmured nonsense at it, trying to coax it closer. To her surprise it eventually slinked nearer, and she was shocked to see that the cat was not a cat at all. It was the calico kitten that had latched itself to her trousers earlier. She let it sniff at her hand for a long time—it appeared pleased to discover its own eau du pee on her—and when she gently rubbed its chin with a finger, it purred lightly.

  “Some tough guy you turned out to be,” Claudia murmured. She sighed. “If I point you at Brian and say ‘kill!’, will you?”

  She could bring the kitten to the pound in the morning. What she couldn’t do was leave it in the car overnight. She also couldn’t delay the inevitable any longer. Gently, Claudia scooped the kitten up and nestled it against her shirt. She half hoped it would leap from her hands and sprint into the trees around the house. It didn’t, though, and when she felt its head quivering against her throat she held it just a little more firmly on her march to the house.

  Brian had come bearing gifts. A compact stereo in ruby casing rested on an end table by the couch. Colorful lights pulsed from a panel on the front. It was the same system she had intended to buy Robin for Christmas. Music swept through the room, some kind of throbbing rock that her daughter favored. Claudia inhaled slowly, steeling herself. They hadn’t seen her yet, hadn’t heard her come in. Both were hunched by the table, fooling with the stereo controls. At that moment, Claudia knew the kitten wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Hello, Brian. What a surprise,” she said.

  He turned slowly, a casual grin spreading over his face, a beguiling smile so familiar, so intimate, that for a nanosecond she felt her heart bang out of sync. Bastard.

  “You look good, Claudia,” he said, rising from his knees. Without taking his eyes from her, he reached down and lowered the volume on the stereo. “Did you—”

  Whatever he was about to say was lost in Robin’s screech. She’d spotted the kitten and was across the room in a moment, eclipsing the tension with an exuberance that made Claudia laugh out loud. God love this kid, this half-girl, half-woman who had made an otherwise disastrous union entirely worthwhile.

  “Easy, easy, kiddo. You don’t want to scare it,” she said. “He’s been through a lot today.” She pried the kitten’s nails from her shirt and gently handed it over.

  Robin pressed the kitten to her face “He’s for me? You bought me a kitten? I thought you said no animals—‘not now, not ever, never.’ They’re dirty and expensive and need too much attention. Hello. Wasn’t that you?”

  Claudia shrugged. “I caved. The little guy was on his way to the pound. I looked at it and said ‘no way.’ This one’s got Robin written all over him.” She glanced over Robin’s head at Brian. Hah. Top that, you son of a bitch.

  Robin held the kitten out, examining it. “You just need a little love, don’t you” she cooed. The kitten mewed plaintively and Robin’s eyes pivoted to Claudia. “Please tell me you didn’t forget to pick up cat food and a litter box.”

  Claudia held up a hand. “Give me some credit, Robin,” she said smoothly. “I didn’t buy anything yet because I figured you’d want to pick things out for him yourself.” Oh, this was fun.

  Robin nodded. “Good idea. Not to be rude, but you probably don’t have a clue what a kitty needs.”

  Claudia happily conceded the truth in that, and told Robin to go find her shoes so they could get to the store before it closed. She set off without protest, the kitten still clutched to her chest, the stereo forgotten.

  “What’re you doing here, Brian?” Claudia said swiftly.

  “How about ‘nice to see you’, Brian?” he said.

  “It’s not. What do you want?”

  “I missed her birthday. I’m here catching up.”

  “The story of your life.”

  “I take it you’re going to be sour on me to the day you draw your last breath.”

  “What I think or feel doesn’t matter. But you can’t keep bouncing in and out of Robin’s life on a whim. What’s the matter with you that you don’t get that?”

  Brian sighed. “Here we go, the world according to Detective Lieutenant Claudia Hershey.”

  She shook her head. “Leave it alone, Brian. You don’t like my lifestyle. I don’t like yours.” She felt her hands shaking and pressed them against her legs. “Look, you brought her a present. Good for you. Now when are you leaving?”

  They both stood six feet tall. On the job, Claudia’s height was an advantage. With Brian, it never had been. Almost nothing had been. She didn’t look away, though.

  “I want her for the summer, Claudia.”

  Chapter 3

  Anyone who lived in Florida quickly learned that come summer time, it was best not to leave the house without an umbrella. Summer storms blew in almost daily, and with a ferocity made all the more dramatic by extravagant displays of lightning. That lightning—it was nothing to fool with. It cuffed Florida around more than any other state in the union, and those who thought it was more show than sizzle claimed morgue space with sad regularity.

  That was just one reason Claudia didn’t want to get out of her car when she saw a pick-up truck on the side of the road and a man crouched beside it, examining a tire. The other reason was the man—Chief Suggs. What miserable luck. The stomach upset that sent him home the day before was apparently gone now. She wouldn’t be able to put off telling him about the Farr case; he wouldn’t like what she was doing with it. It didn’t help that she was running late this morning, either. She eased the car behind the truck and slid out, struggling with her umbrella. Suggs had thrown a rain slicker over his clothes, but even with the hood pulled over his head she could see the set of his jaw.

  “Looks like you could use a lift,” she called out, pitching her voice above the drum of the rain. “What happened?”

  “You’re late, Hershey,” Suggs said. “You shoulda been at your desk twenty minutes ago.” He kicked the tire with a boot. “I got a reason. You don’t.”

  Well, yes, she did, actually. But Claudia wasn’t about to share her personal life with Suggs. “Couldn’t be helped,” she said. She was spared further response when a thunderclap startled them both. A second later, lightning flared in the west. “Why don’t I give you a ride in? You can send someone out later to change the tire and bring the truck back.”

  “I don’t need to rouse the troops for a damned tire, Hershey.” He cracked his knuckles and smirked. “I’m here. You’re here. We’re both able-bodied. And anyway, it hardly appears you’re in that much of a rush today.”

  They locked eyes. “Fine,” Claudia said. “Let’s do it, then.” She retrieved a hooded poncho from the trunk of the Cavalier and set a reflective cone behind her car. Traffic was light, but trucks favored the four-lane road and she wasn’t of a mind to challenge their visual acuity in a storm. By the time she was ready to test her muscles, Suggs had hauled out the spare, a lug wrench and the jack.

  Rain beat at them from an angle. Claudia’s glasses quickly became extraneous and she stuffed them in a pocket. She braced her feet against the slick pavement and pried the hubcap from the flat tire while the chief angled the jack into place.

  “So t
ell me, Hershey—and I hope this is good—what’s with the melodrama I’m hearing about the Farr case? You needed crime scene to hold your hand at the trailer? ’Cause that’s what I hear, that you brought a unit in, then sealed the trailer off when they were done. Hand me that lug wrench.”

  So he already knew.

  “My intent was to fill you in this morning,” Claudia said. She shoved the hubcap to the side with her foot, then passed the tire iron to Suggs. He eased himself to a knee and began loosening the nuts. “I brought crime scene in as a precaution,” she told him. “There were a couple of incongruities in Farr’s home.” She winced when Suggs’s grip on the wrench slipped, bruising his knuckles.

  He swore and glared up at her. “‘Incongruities’. Well, gee, that explains just about everything, Hershey.” He shifted from one knee to the other. “Now can the fifty-cent words and tell me why in hell you think an old lady with a liquor habit couldn’t just drop dead in her tub. Matter of fact, it looks to me like she died pretty easy for an old woman who lived life so hard. Why does everything with you have to be a . . . a quest.”

  Quest. Good one, thought Claudia. Must have picked that one up from Booey. But it was as if the chief were reading her mind, because before she could respond he said, “And this business of you sticking Boo with computer scut work . . . I won’t tolerate it, damn it.”

  “He got pretty sick out at—”

  “Horseshit, Hershey. I know exactly what you were doing. Don’t do it again. Hear me?”

  “I hear you.”

  Suggs carried about twenty pounds more than he needed to. He grunted with the effort of standing and straightening. Rain cascaded from the hood of his slicker. “Those nuts are about as loose as they’re going to get.” He exhaled. “Crank that jack up while I go raise Sally. I don’t want her sendin’ out a posse for us.”

  It wasn’t the first flat Claudia had ever changed. It wouldn’t be the last. She bent to the task and wrestled the tire off before the chief was finished on the radio. She was just pushing the spare on when he returned.

  “Rain’s startin’ to slow a bit,” he said. He leaned over to watch Claudia tighten the lug nuts. “Thing is, Hershey, you know good and well I’m not keen on havin’ Flagg County lookin’ up our skirts—your ‘incongruities’ aside.”

  He was referring to the Flagg County Sheriff’s Office, which provided crime scene support to Indian Run on the rare occasion when it was needed. The police department wasn’t big enough to have its own. Suggs worried endlessly that one day Flagg would absorb the IRPD altogether.

  “Look, Chief, it couldn’t be helped.” Claudia struggled for a word that wouldn’t set him off again. “It might be that Wanda Farr’s death was accidental. Probably was. But—”

  “Yeah, yeah. That’s what Booey said you said: ‘probably’. And if—”

  Claudia stood so abruptly she jarred them both against the truck. “Damn it all to hell! How about you let me finish what I’m trying to say? How about we leave Booey out of it, and we leave Flagg out of it—at least long enough for me to tell you what I need to? Because there were incongruities, all right?”

  The rain had slowed to a drizzle and the sun was beginning to reassert itself in the east. In another half it would look like it had never rained at all.

  “Settle down, Hershey. This ain’t the OK Corral.”

  Claudia leaned against the pick-up and waited for a semi to hurtle past them. “Number one, Farr wasn’t exactly known for her personal hygiene. You have to ask yourself why she was taking a bath in the first place—why now, why on the day she dies. Now maybe that’s just one of life’s tragic ironies, until you get to Number two. She socked away a lot of wine. No secret. But a glass on the edge of her tub held some kind of hard liquor. I saw wine bottles in the trailer, but no booze bottles, and I find that more than just a little out of whack. Number three, her door was unlocked. And Number four, she was on her back in the tub, with her head below the faucet. Come on; people put their feet under the faucet, not their heads.” Claudia rooted in her pocket for her glasses and put them on, ignoring the smudges. “Oh, and one more thing, Chief. The original call to animal control came in anonymous. I don’t like it.”

  Suggs shrugged out of his rain slicker. “Last year, you were dead-on with that psychic case. I didn’t think you were, but you proved me wrong. I’m man enough to admit it. But you have a habit of lookin’ for monsters under every bed and . . . stop shakin’ your head, Hershey.”

  Claudia folded her arms across her chest.

  “This Farr thing, I gotta tell you, I’m not even close to bein’ persuaded. Everything you just said—it can all be explained.”

  “That’s right. And that’s what I’m trying to do.”

  “Uh-huh.” Suggs sighed. “So what’s your next move?”

  “I have people to talk to.”

  Wordlessly, Suggs reached down and grabbed the flat tire. He pitched it into the back of the pickup with a grunt. “Give me the wrench. I can finish up on my own.” He took it from Claudia and looked at her for a long time. “Anywhere you go? You take Boo with you. I want that boy to learn a thing or two about police work—even if it turns out to be the wrong thing.”

  Claudia thought she heard him mutter “probably will be” while he was turning back to the tire. But maybe that was just a deceit of the road, the sound of traffic over a rain-washed highway playing tricks on her ears. She took her poncho off and shook it out. Then she picked up the safety cone and tossed it with the poncho into the Cavalier’s trunk. She was thinking about the dead cat lady and didn’t notice the rainbow forming in the east when she drove off.

  * * *

  Booey was at Claudia’s desk when she got in, pecking away at the keyboard, his attention so absorbed that he didn’t notice her until she stood just inside the doorway to her office. He scrambled to his feet when she greeted him, chirped a hello and gestured at the computer.

  “I almost couldn’t wait for you to get in because you are going to be so blown away, Lieutenant! Officer Carella and I got you totally, totally networked. Without even leaving your desk you can access just about everything you could ever need. You can blaze right into NCIC, FCIC, motor vehicles—you name it. Your set-up is the police equivalent of the Starship Enterprise!”

  Claudia mustered a smile, but the boy’s energy exhausted her. She did not know how she’d go the full two weeks with him.

  “I’m still tinkering with a few preferences to make accessing files easy for you, but it’s basically ready to go now,” he said. “You want to give it a test drive?”

  “I do, Booey, but has to wait.” Claudia plucked a sheaf of phone messages from her desk, avoiding his crestfallen expression. And then it occurred to her that with a minor infraction of the rules, she could turn his disappointment into brownie points with the chief. “Look, forget whatever tinkering you’re doing. I got as far as getting Wanda Farr’s Social Security number from the power company yesterday. That’s not much, but it’s the gold card for getting some real information, which may or may not come in handy. Hang on a second.” Claudia scrounged in her notepad, found the cat lady’s Social Security number and jotted it down for him. “Since you already know how to access data, see what you can dig up on her. See if she’s got any priors. See if you can track down any next of kin. Find out who holds title on her trailer. Might’ve been her. Might not’ve.”

  Booey scribbled furiously on a scratch pad. Claudia waited for him to catch up. “If you’ve got time check into whether she ever held any sort of professional license, filed suit, got sued. See if she was a registered voter. See if she checked books out of the library.” Long shots, and not all of it would come from a computer records check, but it would keep him busy and . . . you never knew. “I’m going to catch up on some phone calls and check into a few other things. Holler if you need me. When we’re done we’ll hit the road and talk to some people. Got all that?”

  He brightened. “Absolutely! I was hoping w
e’d get back into the cat lady’s death. Matter of fact, I told my uncle about her last night after dinner. He hadn’t been feeling very well, but he sat right up when I laid it out for him. I think he’s impressed with how thorough you are.”

  “You’re staying at your uncle’s house?”

  “Sure. Did you think I lived here?”

  Claudia nodded. “I guess I assumed you did.”

  “Nope. My family’s in West Palm Beach. My daddy’s the one who suggested I do my internship here. Uncle Mac thought it was a terrific idea, too. He’s my godfather—did you know that? I think he’s actually very pleased that I have such an interest in police work.”

  Doomed. She was doomed. The kid would be a constant pipeline to Suggs.

  She left Booey tapping away on the keyboard and slid into a chair at a vacant desk in the multipurpose room. She nodded to an officer laboring over a report, then turned her back to him and leafed through the messages. Routine, routine, routine . . . she stopped at the fourth. Dennis Heath.

  Claudia leaned back in the chair. Was it possible that she hadn’t talked to him in a week? Hadn’t returned the last several calls? Was she nuts? She didn’t have to look far into her history to know that Dennis was the most genuinely decent man she’d ever met. She liked that he could nudge a laugh from her, even on her worst days. She liked that he knew how to make a decent omelet, that he remembered to put the toilet seat down, that he earned a living as an artist. And in bed? No question—he had most of the right moves. Even Robin had warmed to him. But . . . what?

  With a ping of guilt, Claudia stuffed the message into her pocket. Later. She’d call him later. Would, would, would.

  She scanned the remaining two messages. The medical examiner’s office had called. The Farr autopsy wasn’t even scheduled yet. Big surprise. The cat lady never got priority in life. She sure wouldn’t get it in death. The last message was a reminder from her dentist’s office about a routine cleaning the next day. Claudia picked up the phone. The job couldn’t take priority over everything in her life, but the dentist? No contest. She rescheduled for the next month.